Author: potus

Among Richard Nixon’s many presidential priorities—ending the Vietnam War, thawing relations with China, expanding environmental protections—there was one initiative his team hoped to keep well under the radar: his secret “enemies list.” In an August 1971 memo, White House Counsel John Dean offered a piquant summary of the project’s goal: to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.”The formal list began in June 1971as a short memo of 20 names of people, most of whom had deep ties to the Democratic Party. Actor Paul Newman made an appearance, with the notation “Radic-Lib causes. Heavy Mc Carthy involvement…

WASHINGTON (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s anti-vaccine advocacy is outside the mainstream. His previous statements on abortion could alienate Republicans. But a new poll finds that not all of his controversial health goals are unpopular — in fact, at least one has broad support among Democrats and Republicans.As Kennedy’s Senate confirmation hearings begin, his bid to become the nation’s top health official could depend on how staunchly he sticks to these personal beliefs during questioning. He has already softened some of his long-held views. He’s facing some skepticism from the public, according to a new survey from The Associated…

U.S. President Donald Trump celebrated an apparent victory on Sunday when he coerced Colombian President Gustavo Petro to allow the resumption of U.S. deportation flights to the country. Petro had previously announced on X that he had turned away two U.S. military flights carrying deported Colombians, writing that the United States “must establish a protocol for the dignified treatment of migrants before we receive them.” Trump and Petro sparred on social media for hours. But the Colombian president was forced into submission after his U.S. counterpart announced retaliatory tariffs of 25 percent on all Colombian goods, set to rise to…

At the stroke of noon on December 31, 1999, the Panamanian flag was raised over the Panama Canal, signaling the final transfer of the 51-mile, man-made waterway from the United States to Panama. The ceremony brought an end to nearly a century of strained relations and violent protest over America’s ownership and management of a key economic resource in the heart of Latin America.The low point in U.S.-Panamanian relations came in 1964 when clashes began in the U.S.-controlled Panama Canal Zone over the flying of a Panama flag alongside a U.S. flag at a local high school. The country erupted…

Is the United States currently experiencing a national emergency? No matter when you read this, the answer is “yes.”Technically, the United States has been in a constant state of emergency since November 1979, when Jimmy Carter responded to the Iran hostage crisis by issuing an executive order declaring a national emergency and blocking Iranian government property. Even though Iran released the hostages on Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day in 1981, Reagan renewed Carter’s emergency declaration every year during his presidency. Since then, every president has continued to renew the 1979 emergency—while also declaring many emergencies of their own.When Donald Trump started…

U.S. President Donald Trump’s strident demand that the semi-autonomous island territory of Greenland come under U.S. “ownership” has set off a firestorm of consternation across the Atlantic. Although geographically part of the North American continent, the frozen island nation—more than three times Texas’s size, with 60,000 inhabitants—has been under European control for centuries. Europe has progressively loosened its control of Greenland over time. And there’s no reason to think that it wouldn’t further loosen that hold to allow the United States to pursue policies of mutual trans-Atlantic interest, including the expansion of mining and the U.S. military presence. The greatest…

If you only listened to the Trump administration’s pronouncements or only read the deer-in-the-headlights accounts provided by assorted legacy journalists, you might conclude that the new administration has already built up an irresistible head of steam. Given Trump’s monarchical pretensions, he’d undoubtedly like us all to think he is unbound by limits and that resistance is futile. That is not the case, however, and we should not mistake Trump’s bombastic return and far-reaching early initiatives for unstoppable momentum. On the contrary, we are more likely to look back on this period as the highwater mark of Trumpian hubris. Making lavish…

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday left in place Mississippi’s Jim Crow-era practice of removing voting rights from people convicted of certain felonies, including nonviolent crimes such as forgery and timber theft.The justices, without comment, turned away an appeal from Mississippi residents who have completed their sentences, but who have been unable to regain their right to vote. The court’s action let stand a ruling by the full 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that rejected the claim that permanent loss of voting rights amounted to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Constitution. Mississippi legislators, not…

Military families protesting the Defense Department’s anti-DEI push heckled Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on his arrival at United States European Command headquarters in Germany on Tuesday.On a visit to the U.S. military’s key European military hub in Stuttgart, Hegseth was booed by around two dozen people who live at the base in an apparent demonstration against the policies currently being implemented by the Trump administration. The demonstrators at the short protest repeatedly chanted “DEI,” apparently in a reference to the recent ban Hegseth has placed on some books in defense department schools. Hegseth last week ordered the restriction of learning…

Bird flu, or avian influenza, might seem like a relatively new phenomenon to the general public. But the disease, technically called Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI), has been sickening birds since the 1800s, and likely much longer. And in humans, cases date at least as back to the 1918 flu pandemic. If scientists could have surveyed wastewater hundreds of years ago, they might have found it had been circulating for much longer.Understanding the history of bird flu can help reveal potential risks for a future pandemic, says Catharine Paules, an infectious diseases physician at Penn State Health Milton S. Hershey…